


The Gentleness That Comes

by shewhospeakswiththunder



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1990s, Alternate Universe - Boxing, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Bartender Rey (Star Wars), Ben is a Grump, Blood and Violence, F/M, First Meetings, Head Injury, Meet-Cute, New York City, Stitches, Underground Boxing Club, but just in relation to actual boxing, lawyer!Leia, until he is soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22686094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhospeakswiththunder/pseuds/shewhospeakswiththunder
Summary: For the prompts:"1990s New York AU. Ben rejects his wealthy, reputable family (bonus points for !lawyer Leia) and decides to fend for himself. He ends up getting involved with an underground boxing community. One day, bloodied and bruised after a fight, he goes for a drink to the local bar he frequents. To his surprise, he finds a young, fresh-faced girl behind the bar instead of the usual bartender."And:"We have not touched the stars,nor are we forgiven, which brings us backto the hero’s shoulders and the gentleness that comes,not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it."Richard Siken - "Snow and Dirty Rain."
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Phasma & Kylo Ren, Phasma & Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 50
Kudos: 185
Collections: For one is both and both are one in love: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange, Reylo Hidden Gems





	The Gentleness That Comes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ilum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilum/gifts).



> Just a treat for the participant, your prompts spoke to my muse! Hope you enjoy! 😁💕

  


Ben’s face is a fucking mess. His cutman hadn’t shown.

* * *

_Ben had grown up in the city that never sleeps, and he could verify that much about it was true._

_Capital of the World, the city so nice they named it twice; a mecca of commerce, fashion, celebrity; bright lights, sky high trade centers; The Big Apple._

_Those names he had issue with._

_New York City in 1992 was a stinking morass of crime and crumbling concrete, rotting from the subway up. But it was home._

* * *

The gash above his right brow still drips blood into his one good eye, the other swollen shut from a nasty left hook Ben hadn’t seen coming.

* * *

_Ben slammed the front door to his parents’ house with every ounce of strength he had, relishing the way it shook the doorframe. One last petty show of defiance. A last goodbye._

_His mother had taken the news that he had dropped out of medical school just about as well as could be expected. He had watched her in court as a kid—passionate with the zeal of self-righteous conviction. That’s what you got with a parent ranked #1 in Forbes magazine as Leading Woman of the Law for two years running._

_A fucking fight._

* * *

With a low groan, Ben practically falls into the stool at the bar. The bruising on his ribs is starting to catch up with him, the distant soreness rapidly closing in, only a hint of the real pain he is going to be in if he doesn’t start pouring alcohol into his stomach this minute.

“Whiskey,” he mutters to the vaguely human-shaped form behind the counter.

A blatant gasp puts him on edge. They’ve just seen his beaten pulp of a face, apparently.

* * *

_The basement was sweltering despite the freezing winter air outside. A screaming, writhing mass of bodies almost totally hid from view two men pummeling each other senseless in a makeshift sparring ring, but Ben was taller than most and could just see over their heads._

_Each vicious blow sent the crowd higher into frenzy. It was utter chaos. It was perfect._

_The red-haired man who had escorted Ben down the flight of poorly-lit stairs to this den of violence had to yell at him to be heard over the uproar._

_“Welcome to the club.”_

* * *

“Which one?”

It’s a woman, and not a voice Ben recognizes, which explains the question. She’s never served him before, so she wouldn’t know that he doesn’t give two shits which brand of whiskey he knocks back, just that it’s strong.

“Doesn’t matter,” he responds, grumpier for having to elaborate at all.

He blinks a few times and gingerly rubs his knuckle over his eyelid to try to clear his line of vision, only to realize that she’s placing the bottle back on the liquor shelf, a filled cut-glass tumbler in hand.

“What are you doing?” he accuses, his irritation spiking.

“Pouring your drink,” she says back. It’s clear from her tone that she’d love to have added the word ‘asshole’ to the end of her sentence.

“Give me the bottle.”

“What?”

“Do I look like I only want one drink tonight?” he growls.

“I can’t—”

_“Phasma!”_ Ben shouts, his impatience and steadily increasing pain winning over manners by a landslide. “I know you’re back there!”

* * *

_Ben’s hands were wrapped in linen and not fitted with bulky boxing gloves, so when he landed his first uppercut, the impact of knuckles-on-jaw rattled up his arm and into his shoulder. His opponent stumbled, clearly surprised, and the triumph singing in Ben’s veins pulsed hot and powerful. He quickly forgot the pain._

_A fringe contender, an upstart, almost scoring a one-hit knockout was a rarity, but Ben had always known he was meant for this._

_He was born for the brawl._

_His second swing landed, and his opponent hit the canvas like a ton of bricks._

* * *

“Solo. What’s the problem?” Phasma’s sardonic voice filters through the soft rock playing in the background of the bar.

“Who is this?” Ben gestures flippantly at the woman who is supposed to be serving him.

“Your bartender.”

“Is she new or something?”

To the girl, Phasma explains, “Just give him what he wants. He’s the one exception to the rule.”

“The no-free-drinks rule?” She clarifies. Phasma must nod, because she continues. “So I just… give him the bottle. From the shelf.”

“And my glass if you don’t fucking mind,” Ben spits out, more in reaction to the sharp stab that lances through his ribs at that exact moment. He needs booze. Fast.

“Can it, Solo. And if you don’t stop harassing my employees, you can kiss your special treatment here goodbye.”

Ben scoffs. “You owe me. You know how much you won betting on me tonight.”

The tense silence speaks volumes, and Ben’s glass of whiskey lands in front of him with a vehement thud against the lacquered bartop. Maybe he can’t see for shit, but he doesn’t need to see them to know they're both beyond pissed.

* * *

_Ben never lost. Every punch was a devastating blow, every round a victory. When the bell rang, it was always his arm lifted into the air by the referee, his name the crowd chanted, his pockets the winner’s purse poured into._

_It was gory money, the earnings of a savage, but Ben didn’t care. The jagged scars on his hands from opponents’ teeth were badges of his trade, reminders of every weak man he mercilessly laid low before him._

_He was a brute, a mercenary. A blood-spattered god._

* * *

Three drinks in and the blossoming bodily ache recedes, replaced by the fuzzy numbness of intoxication. He gets drunk quickly on fight nights, empty as his stomach is. It doesn’t matter how many times Ben wins; he still pukes from nerves right before every match.

“You need stitches. You’re bleeding all over the bar.”

Ben swipes at the cut on his forehead again and pulls his hand away, wet crimson visible against his pale skin.

The first words on the tip of his tongue are _you need to mind your own business,_ but shit, she’s right.

Normally his cutman would have patched up any injuries sustained during the course of the fight and put the final stitches in afterward, but the wretch hadn’t bothered to show up tonight. If he could just _see,_ Ben would sew himself back up on his own, but as things stand, he has no depth perception with only one good eye and he’s more likely to poke himself in the cornea than do any good, even with the help of a mirror.

His words slur out before he can catch them and hold them back.

“You want to do it?”

“Give you stitches?” She sounds incredulous.

“Yeah,” Ben chuckles, downing the rest of his drink. “Got a kit in my bag.”

The bar is dead now. His fight had been last on the docket, the main event of the night, and by now it’s probably early in the morning.

“Fine. If you bring it in.”

There’s probably an element of vindictiveness to her concession. Ben can understand the appeal of stabbing a rude customer in the face with a tiny needle, and it’s nothing he doesn’t deserve. He knows what he is.

* * *

_Another slammed door in a life-long series of them, only this time, it’s in his father’s face._

_His father’s desperate plea to come home was years too late in the making. It had only stoked the constantly simmering resentment inside Ben into a white heat._

_The walls of his miniscule apartment had shuddered at the force of the door hitting the jamb, and Ben had stomped around in a fit of fury, pulling at his hair and trying to convince himself that he was angry, livid even, instead of deeply hurting and ashamed._

_Finding himself in the bathroom, the space stiflingly small for his broad-shouldered frame, he looked in the mirror._

_The glass shattered around his fist, shards falling with a tinkling sound. In the sink, on the floor, lodged into the skin of his hand, drops of blood already welling at the wounds._

_What fragments of mirror remained on the wall reflected back his splintered image. Well, that’s all he was anyway. A fractured man with blood on his hands._

* * *

Ben pours another healthy serving of whiskey into his glass and throws it back, savoring the sting of alcohol as it runs down his throat, before sloppily rising to his feet. He grabs the stool for support as the world tilts alarmingly around him.

His duffel bag is back by Phasma’s office, thrown to the ground during Ben’s hasty entrance from the back alley. It bag itself smells disgusting, of sweat both old and new, but Ben ignores the odor and rifles through its contents. Binding tape, linen strips, the biggest tub of Vaseline money can buy, a sweaty pair of spandex underwear… the small suture kit he always keeps well-stocked.

He stumbles back to the bar and sits, opening the kit and laying it flat in front of him. The silvery metal of the tweezers, scissors, and Kelly clamps shine in the low light, and Ben hears the bartender round the raised bartop and step over to him.

It’s… different with her on the same side of the counter, and for the first time, Ben gets a decent view of her face. Fresh-eyed, young, freckled. She’s pretty. The strained service relationship between them is now stripped away, leaving in its wake the potential for something else entirely. Something maybe more… personal.

* * *

_The night Ben first lost a fight, he thought he was going to die._

_His head throbbed with waves of agony so fierce he couldn’t think straight. The lights were too bright, sounds caustic to his ears, every nerve ending a live wire shooting jolts of pain through him. Breathing was torment, movement impossible._

_Even his chest hurt, but it had been difficult to tell if that was due to the physical injury of getting the living shit kicked out of him, or just the ache of shame and misery._

* * *

“Wash your hands first,” Ben instructs her, willing his tongue and lips to cooperate enough to form intelligible sentences. “Really well. And don’t touch any door handles after.”

She shrugs, and the simple, casual air of it hits Ben strangely. It’s the first non-aggressive human interaction he's been part of since… to be honest, he can’t remember when.

Clumsily, he preps the equipment while she’s gone, finally managing after several attempts and many muttered curses at his unwieldy fingers to enclose the base of the small suture needle with the metal clamp.

“Okay,” she says when she returns, smelling like the generic bathroom soap Phasma buys.

Handing her the clamp, Ben takes a square of gauze from the kit and dabs at the cut, trying to clear it of excess blood so she can better see what she’s doing, then taking an alcohol swab and cleansing the general site of injury. He hisses at its sting, and he peripherally notices her flinch in sympathy.

Gesturing for her to come closer, he waits until she’s well within reach to begin patiently coaching her through inserting the needle into his forehead. Her hesitancy is obvious and endearing, so opposite the callous digging and pulling he’s used to from his far more experienced cutman.

The first poke makes him wince, but Ben makes a conscious effort to remain still for her, and he feels the familiar tugging sensation at his skin as she pulls the suture thread though.

It’s quiet except for Ben’s murmured instructions and the clicking of the medical instruments as she uses them. Her closeness relaxes him, and he breathes deeply through the little jabs and various discomforts of being sewn back together, finding an unexpected peace in the way her hands worked on him. It felt… right. Domestic, even, if there was ever a time when a complete stranger patching closed the bleeding holes in one’s head could be compared to ‘home.’

And then it’s over. She ties off the long thread with the long, wide looping technique around the clamp he calmly talks her through, making the knot and pulling it closed but not too tightly.

Ben doesn’t want this to be over, this moment of intimacy, of someone being gentle with him. She moves back all too soon, and the sudden loss of nearness is a small heartbreak.

* * *

_Earlier that night, Ben had vomited bile into a grimy toilet in the club’s sad excuse for a locker room, his stomach churning and his hands trembling with the jitters that always struck him minutes before a match._

_It dawned on him, as he wiped his mouth with the back of a still shaky hand, that this was his life. Bile and blood in a filthy bathroom._

_He heard his name announced over the microphone, and the roar of the crowd waiting for him. It was time._

* * *

“You look awful,” she laughs at him, taking in her handiwork. “Like Frankenstein.”

“Like a monster?” It’s supposed to follow up her poking fun, but any amusement dies within Ben as he realizes just what this young woman saw before her. It must be like looking at a monster.

She’s pensive for a moment, then says, “If I remember right, wasn’t the mad scientist the real monster at the end of that story?”

With his good eye, Ben searches her and finds only genuine playfulness, knowing for a fact that he’ll recall the way she flips her brown hair over her shoulder then long after he leaves this place for the night.

He tries out a smile but winces as the cut on his lip splits open.

“Thanks,” he mumbles, unable to meet her gaze any longer.

She gives a thoughtful _hmm_ and goes back behind the bar and approaches him again from the other side, leaning on her elbows over it.

“Well, now you owe me one. My name’s Rey, and you’re not allowed to give me shit anymore. Got it?”

Still the lighthearted tone, but she says it in a way that brooks no argument. Ben nods, chastised.

“It’s like, three in the morning. You should go home,” she continues, still smiling.

“Don’t like my company, Rey?” He jokes darkly while slipping out of his stool and gathering up the supplies from his kit. He savors her name on his tongue, wanting the chance to say it more.

“Maybe I’d like it better after we start off on the right foot next time.”

Fair enough. Ben considers the implication. It’s an opening, an opportunity, and one he has no intention of missing.

“Until next time, then,” he says over his shoulder as he heads to the back entrance, grabbing his duffel bag on the way out.

It’s his habit to take whatever remains in the whiskey bottle home with him, to finish out the night by drinking himself into a stupor. Tonight, he leaves it behind without a second’s hesitation.

Crisp spring air meets him as he opens the back door, his injuries stinging, but he inhales deeply and takes it for an omen. The tidings of a new beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> UPDATE: I'm in love with this moodie by reylotrash, ahhh!!! Thank youuuu 💕💕💕
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